William Shatner’s Up Till Now
As I write this I’m a little less than half way through William Shatner’s autobiography, Up Till Now and I’m already hating that it will end. Shatner’s stories, observations and asides are entertaining and written as if he was chatting with the reader over a McDonald’s Mocca Frappe. [Stay thirsty, my friends!]
Growing up, I was a HUGE Star Trek fan [although Spock was my favorite character] and I did enjoy Shatner in Boston Legal and The Twilight Zone episodes [that he headlined], but I wasn’t a TJ Hooker fan. And except for the Star Trek movies starring Shatner and the original crew, there are no other William Shatner films in my movie collection. That had led me to believe that I might enjoy only a small part of Shatner’s autobiography. Boy, was I wrong. Ever page has either made me smile or given me some interesting insight. And sometimes both. For example, Shatner discusses being flown to France with his co-stars for the premiere of an animated film…
In the animated film, Over the Hedge I played Ozzie the Opossum, whose primary survival technique is playing dead, but truly dramatically dead. Shatnerian playing dead. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of DreamWorks, sent the cast, including Bruce Willis and myself to the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of the film. As we were walking up the red carpet, surrounded by photographers, we were introduced to the French actors who had played our characters in the French version. Wait a second, I wondered, we’re the stars of the film, right? I knew we were the stars, our names were in big letters on the lobby cards and credits. But as this is an animated film our faces weren’t on the screen, and now our voices were replaced by French actors. So we were the stars of a film in which we didn’t even appear. What were we doing there?
Think about it. Pay big bucks to an actor who will never appear on screen and then replace his voice too! It’s gotta make you simply shake your head and smile.
